I have scripts to automate any digital conversions that I perform, so time isn't really a factor. It's easy enough to grab a stack of discs, set them by my workstation, and do the ripping while you're working on other tasks. If you have a media PC that you use to play back DVDs, you can perform the ripping there the first time that you want to watch the movie. Any time someone else wants to watch it, they can just watch the cached version.
As for your other points, it's largely a packrat mentality. There have been times when I wished that I could rent a movie, only to find that it's no longer available on DVD. Sometimes Netflix has it, sometimes they don't, but when production stops, it stops, and as copies of the movie wear out, it becomes much harder to come by. That makes purchasing them and backing them up on magnetic media more attractive, even if I may not get around to watching the films again any time soon.
Why not? When storage density gets so high and the drives get so cheap, why not rip all of your movies and store them on disk? I'm lazy, and don't want to get up to change the disk.
Copyright appears to be largely unenforceable on pseudo-anonymous networks, due in part to the difficulty of gathering evidence on these networks. This will only lead to the members of the RIAA buying stronger laws which either allow a suit for weaker evidence, or allow seizure of computer equipment in order to gather evidence of copyright infringement. In the latter case, such a law is already making its way through the congressional process.
Copying is infringement. Whether or not an instance of copying is fair use (and thus not infringement) is left up to the courts to decide, hence why I asked whether there were any legal precedents in the courts.
There are several tests for fair use. Just passing one test may not be (and in many cases is not) enough to label an instance of copying as fair use of the work.
In fact, reading up on fair use, "personal use" isn't listed at all. Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. Â 107 states:
In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Copying an entire work for personal use runs afoul of point 3. Copying a work of entertainment probably runs afoul of point 2. Point 4 is the only consideration which obviously applies to copying for personal use--if you do so, you aren't likely changing the value of the copyrighted work (though I think that a compelling argument could be made that it does reduce the value when copied in large numbers.)
So again, the burden really isn't on me. Absent a ruling on "personal use" as fair use, there is no evidence I can see that such copying is not infringement. Even if that argument could be made, it's all speculation until a court rules on such a case.
The bit that has the purjury penaltiy is strictly a statement saying that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright which is allegedly being infringed. This provides for damages against me for filing a takedown notice against Slashdot for one of your comments. It does not provide damages against me for filing a false notice, as long as its my work (or my client's) that I'm claiming was infringed.
When you download, you are either copying a file (illegal, per copyright law) or if someone could successfully argue in a court of law that the other person is doing the copying, then you are instigating/inciting copyright infringement by requesting the file. People have been charged with conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, you know.
The RIAA Is playing games with spin, though. They and the media claim that downloaders are being sued, when in fact it's uploaders who are being sued. Originally, this made sense by presuming that if you stop the uploaders, you necessarily stop the downloaders. It turns out, though, that's it's pretty hard to sue downloaders who aren't also uploading because they rarely leave tracks, unlike uploaders who necessarily leave tracks.
Heck, in my experience, FreeBSD has better device support than OpenSolaris, and it comes with FreeBSD. It's really the best compromise, if you want that file system.
Ratios, in general, are a bad idea. They're a pyramid scheme. You have to get in early to even have a shot at a high ratio.
I don't think that BitTorrent was designed with ratios in mind, but it was definitely designed with availability. Private trackers should track how long you're connected to the torrent, not how much you've actively uploaded. If you've been seeding for a week, but you only managed to upload a small amount due to other crappy peers, you shouldn't be penalized.
I understand why location aware choking is helpful to ISPs - it reduces border traffic and their costs. Well depending upon how ISPs determine egregious bandwidth usage, it could be the difference between getting a letter telling you to cut back and slipping under the radar.
ISPs have no liability under the DMCA, as long as they follow those guidelines.
ISPs are exempted as common carriers as long as they don't censor traffic.
ISPs do pay their upstream provider for each byte. So when 10% of the users are using 90% of the bandwidth, they quite rationally understand that losing that 10% will pay for itself in data transfer savings. It makes perfect sense. And since they share this common enemy with the content cartels, they're obvious allies in the fight for legislation which legitimizes their behavior.
It'd be the same way if there was enough OSS (and enough interest in OSS) to cause these same sorts of line usage. If everyone currently sharing music and movies were instead sharing Linux distribution ISOs, the ISPs would still be upset (though the content cartels likely wouldn't care.)
Do you have any sort of citation for that? I don't believe that such a legal precedent exists, either in the courts or on the law books.
As far as I can tell, this is one of those urban legends which follows similar lines to the, "You can download this, but you have to delete it in 24 hours or buy it legally." There's no precedent for that, either, but it propagated for several years on the web.
Even if Orion Pictures was still around, which it's not Offtopic, but amusing: The funniest bit of commentary from Weird Al's UHF is at the very beginning, where he sings along with the Orion logo music, "Orion...Orion...is bankrupt now!"
Except that SPF-records somtimes impose a burden on the end-user. Anyone who runs a co-located mail server for a group of people scattered around the world knows what I'm talking about.
Users likely have multiple e-mail addresses. Many e-mail clients just have a default smtp server which must be changed on a per-message basis if you wish to use another. So if they're mailing from your colo, they have to change it if you publish SPF records.
Their ISPs may block connections to port 25 of hosts which are not the ISPs server (in an effort to combat spam.) Well, fine, you shouldn't be using port 25 anyway for submission, but I've seen places block 587, too. Now they can't send mail at all from the co-located host. Well, they could VPN in or something, but that's unlikely to actually happen.
Then there are problems with webmail services who get their captchas broken. You can't just automatically assume that SPF will solve the problem.
SPF is a neat idea, but it's just bogged down with too many problems to be really practical, even if everyone implemented it.
But it's probably not the taser which has made the cops lazy. The laziness is probably something which evolved independantly of the taser. So now we have three options:
1) Have hugely ineffective cops (due to the factors you mention, and without tasers.)
2) Have a very small number of effective cops.
3) Pay cops a lot more so that more qualified people will become cops.
Not great choices.
Moreover, tasers are a lot more effective at controlling a perp than martial arts. At the very least, they take away almost all of the potential human error. If a martial artist makes a mistake, that can cost his/her life, and in the case of an officer, the lives of others.
I don't know what the correct solution is. I really don't. I'm just offering some counterpoints.
It's something that you can do over time, and you can probably sell the old equipment to help subsidize the new.
I think that the solar panels and inverters were probably folded into the $7k that he mentioned, but maybe not (I've only looked into this a little bit.)
So what do the Twitter folks think is going to change by going to another platform? If the problem were really just the scale of the messages, as you suggest, then the obvious solution would be to pass those messages off to specialized servers designed to handle them. If server load isn't the problem, then adding bandwidth would help.
Something just doesn't seem right here. Either the problems that they're experiencing aren't just message passing (as you suggest) or the Twitter folks haven't done enough tests to see where the bottleneck is, and jumping to another platform using a similar design won't help them.
Rails has its place. It's a toy that you can use to build small-scale sites, and it's a tool that can be used for rapid prototyping in preparation for coding with a more appropriate tool. The problem is that people try to build large-scale, production sites using Rails, and they find that it just isn't elegant anymore due to the hacks that you have to do to get it to support large volumes of users.
Of course, by then, they're committed, both in development time and emotionally to the project. It's hard to let go of that, so rather than spending a little time rewriting the site in a more suitable language, they just try to fix Rails over and over. I hate PHP, by the way, but it's quick and efficient. One might try Python, though, if they're trying to get away from Ruby, or Django if they're trying to get away from Rails.
Yes, it is. I was having trouble coming up with concise way of saying "a person no longer has direct possession of the item."
But that goes to my argument about the loosening of language, in general. When there aren't good synonyms for words with specific meanings, I hate to see those words take on additional (and particularly similar) definitions. Take ironic, for example. Alanis Morisette killed that word. A whole generation of people now think that ironic means an amusing or unfortunate coincidence.
You forgot the verb form of the word loose:
20. to let loose; free from bonds or restraint. 21. to release, as from constraint, obligation, or penalty. 24. to shoot; discharge; let fly: to loose missiles at the invaders. From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=loose&x=0&y=0
Though I doubt that most people are confusing this form with the adjective form, it bears mentioning if only because the verb forms are fairly similar--in each form, something is lost. Only in one of the forms, it's intentional.
Slashdot Mirror
I have scripts to automate any digital conversions that I perform, so time isn't really a factor. It's easy enough to grab a stack of discs, set them by my workstation, and do the ripping while you're working on other tasks. If you have a media PC that you use to play back DVDs, you can perform the ripping there the first time that you want to watch the movie. Any time someone else wants to watch it, they can just watch the cached version.
As for your other points, it's largely a packrat mentality. There have been times when I wished that I could rent a movie, only to find that it's no longer available on DVD. Sometimes Netflix has it, sometimes they don't, but when production stops, it stops, and as copies of the movie wear out, it becomes much harder to come by. That makes purchasing them and backing them up on magnetic media more attractive, even if I may not get around to watching the films again any time soon.
Why not? When storage density gets so high and the drives get so cheap, why not rip all of your movies and store them on disk? I'm lazy, and don't want to get up to change the disk.
Copyright appears to be largely unenforceable on pseudo-anonymous networks, due in part to the difficulty of gathering evidence on these networks. This will only lead to the members of the RIAA buying stronger laws which either allow a suit for weaker evidence, or allow seizure of computer equipment in order to gather evidence of copyright infringement. In the latter case, such a law is already making its way through the congressional process.
There are several tests for fair use. Just passing one test may not be (and in many cases is not) enough to label an instance of copying as fair use of the work.
In fact, reading up on fair use, "personal use" isn't listed at all. Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. Â 107 states: In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Copying an entire work for personal use runs afoul of point 3. Copying a work of entertainment probably runs afoul of point 2. Point 4 is the only consideration which obviously applies to copying for personal use--if you do so, you aren't likely changing the value of the copyrighted work (though I think that a compelling argument could be made that it does reduce the value when copied in large numbers.)
So again, the burden really isn't on me. Absent a ruling on "personal use" as fair use, there is no evidence I can see that such copying is not infringement. Even if that argument could be made, it's all speculation until a court rules on such a case.
The bit that has the purjury penaltiy is strictly a statement saying that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright which is allegedly being infringed. This provides for damages against me for filing a takedown notice against Slashdot for one of your comments. It does not provide damages against me for filing a false notice, as long as its my work (or my client's) that I'm claiming was infringed.
When you download, you are either copying a file (illegal, per copyright law) or if someone could successfully argue in a court of law that the other person is doing the copying, then you are instigating/inciting copyright infringement by requesting the file. People have been charged with conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, you know.
The RIAA Is playing games with spin, though. They and the media claim that downloaders are being sued, when in fact it's uploaders who are being sued. Originally, this made sense by presuming that if you stop the uploaders, you necessarily stop the downloaders. It turns out, though, that's it's pretty hard to sue downloaders who aren't also uploading because they rarely leave tracks, unlike uploaders who necessarily leave tracks.
I haven't run any formal tests, but it only seems a tiny bit slower than vinum.
Heck, in my experience, FreeBSD has better device support than OpenSolaris, and it comes with FreeBSD. It's really the best compromise, if you want that file system.
Ratios, in general, are a bad idea. They're a pyramid scheme. You have to get in early to even have a shot at a high ratio.
I don't think that BitTorrent was designed with ratios in mind, but it was definitely designed with availability. Private trackers should track how long you're connected to the torrent, not how much you've actively uploaded. If you've been seeding for a week, but you only managed to upload a small amount due to other crappy peers, you shouldn't be penalized.
Several reasons.
1) Cost efficiency. Is their current infrastructure IPv6 ready? Probably not.
2) A significant number of the peers would also need to be on IPv6. Chicken and egg problem.
3) P2P apps still need to know about IPv6 multicast, right?
Not at all.
ISPs have no liability under the DMCA, as long as they follow those guidelines.
ISPs are exempted as common carriers as long as they don't censor traffic.
ISPs do pay their upstream provider for each byte. So when 10% of the users are using 90% of the bandwidth, they quite rationally understand that losing that 10% will pay for itself in data transfer savings. It makes perfect sense. And since they share this common enemy with the content cartels, they're obvious allies in the fight for legislation which legitimizes their behavior.
It'd be the same way if there was enough OSS (and enough interest in OSS) to cause these same sorts of line usage. If everyone currently sharing music and movies were instead sharing Linux distribution ISOs, the ISPs would still be upset (though the content cartels likely wouldn't care.)
Do you have any sort of citation for that? I don't believe that such a legal precedent exists, either in the courts or on the law books.
As far as I can tell, this is one of those urban legends which follows similar lines to the, "You can download this, but you have to delete it in 24 hours or buy it legally." There's no precedent for that, either, but it propagated for several years on the web.
The funniest bit of commentary from Weird Al's UHF is at the very beginning, where he sings along with the Orion logo music, "Orion...Orion...is bankrupt now!"
Yes! I was trying to remember that last case, and it was just eluding me. It's the one that's most important to me, too.
Except that SPF-records somtimes impose a burden on the end-user. Anyone who runs a co-located mail server for a group of people scattered around the world knows what I'm talking about.
Users likely have multiple e-mail addresses. Many e-mail clients just have a default smtp server which must be changed on a per-message basis if you wish to use another. So if they're mailing from your colo, they have to change it if you publish SPF records.
Their ISPs may block connections to port 25 of hosts which are not the ISPs server (in an effort to combat spam.) Well, fine, you shouldn't be using port 25 anyway for submission, but I've seen places block 587, too. Now they can't send mail at all from the co-located host. Well, they could VPN in or something, but that's unlikely to actually happen.
Then there are problems with webmail services who get their captchas broken. You can't just automatically assume that SPF will solve the problem.
SPF is a neat idea, but it's just bogged down with too many problems to be really practical, even if everyone implemented it.
But it's probably not the taser which has made the cops lazy. The laziness is probably something which evolved independantly of the taser. So now we have three options:
1) Have hugely ineffective cops (due to the factors you mention, and without tasers.)
2) Have a very small number of effective cops.
3) Pay cops a lot more so that more qualified people will become cops.
Not great choices.
Moreover, tasers are a lot more effective at controlling a perp than martial arts. At the very least, they take away almost all of the potential human error. If a martial artist makes a mistake, that can cost his/her life, and in the case of an officer, the lives of others.
I don't know what the correct solution is. I really don't. I'm just offering some counterpoints.
Yeah, the word "citizens" slipped in there accidentally :( I meant people.
Free speech generally applies to public forums and areas. My inbox is not a public forum or area, no matter how much the NSA might wish that it were.
The first amendment, and indeed the entire Constitution, should apply to all citizens appearing before a US court.
It's something that you can do over time, and you can probably sell the old equipment to help subsidize the new.
I think that the solar panels and inverters were probably folded into the $7k that he mentioned, but maybe not (I've only looked into this a little bit.)
So what do the Twitter folks think is going to change by going to another platform? If the problem were really just the scale of the messages, as you suggest, then the obvious solution would be to pass those messages off to specialized servers designed to handle them. If server load isn't the problem, then adding bandwidth would help.
Something just doesn't seem right here. Either the problems that they're experiencing aren't just message passing (as you suggest) or the Twitter folks haven't done enough tests to see where the bottleneck is, and jumping to another platform using a similar design won't help them.
Rails has its place. It's a toy that you can use to build small-scale sites, and it's a tool that can be used for rapid prototyping in preparation for coding with a more appropriate tool. The problem is that people try to build large-scale, production sites using Rails, and they find that it just isn't elegant anymore due to the hacks that you have to do to get it to support large volumes of users.
Of course, by then, they're committed, both in development time and emotionally to the project. It's hard to let go of that, so rather than spending a little time rewriting the site in a more suitable language, they just try to fix Rails over and over. I hate PHP, by the way, but it's quick and efficient. One might try Python, though, if they're trying to get away from Ruby, or Django if they're trying to get away from Rails.
Yes, it is. I was having trouble coming up with concise way of saying "a person no longer has direct possession of the item."
But that goes to my argument about the loosening of language, in general. When there aren't good synonyms for words with specific meanings, I hate to see those words take on additional (and particularly similar) definitions. Take ironic, for example. Alanis Morisette killed that word. A whole generation of people now think that ironic means an amusing or unfortunate coincidence.
21. to release, as from constraint, obligation, or penalty.
24. to shoot; discharge; let fly: to loose missiles at the invaders. From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=loose&x=0&y=0
Though I doubt that most people are confusing this form with the adjective form, it bears mentioning if only because the verb forms are fairly similar--in each form, something is lost. Only in one of the forms, it's intentional.